Pasta with Sausage, Spinach and Mushrooms

I made this about a week after the funeral and it was probably the first food, we enjoyed.


This is the kind of meal, hubby likes, when he arrives home from work.  It has a little bit of everything and is warm and filling.  I got to use up leftover cold cuts, leftover spinach, a can of artichokes which was hanging around too long and a bottle of sundried tomatoes which also was taking up space.

Pasta with Sausage, Spinach, and Artichokes (adapted from Taste of Home )



Ingredients:

12 ounces pasta
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/3 pound cold cuts (I used turkey pastrami), chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 cup canned artichokes, chopped
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon parsley
3/4 t. black pepper
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup fresh spinach

Method:
Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Drain, reserving 1/3 cup of pasta water. Keep pasta warm.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add meat to pan and cook to just heat.
Add the onions, artichokes, tomatoes, garlic, oregano, parsley, salt and pepper to the skillet. Mix well to combine and cook for 5 minutes. 
Add in the white wine and cook for 2 minutes. Toss in the spinach and cook for another two minutes.
Add the pasta to the pan with the vegetables, along with the reserved pasta water, and toss to combine.

Eat and enjoy.

Butter and Parmesan Linguine - Donna Hay

Am I ever glad, the recipe for WWDH is an easy one, this week because this is my time to jump back in, not to regular posting but to just a little bit, tiny little footsteps.  We do eat and I do cook although, I don't have that adventurous feeling.  My daughter, who was the greatest cook and baker would surely be upset with me.  Her passion for cooking outdid mine by miles.  She would get up, in the middle of the night, and start baking.  Sometimes, when she awoke, the next morning, the food would be gone, eaten by loving family members.

When I started blogging, she sent me a bunch of platters and serving dishes for photographs.  She read the blog and commented on recipes and made constructive suggestions.  I guess one way to keep her memory present here is to continue this blog but it still has to be in my time.

This week, we are making an easy linguine, one I have made variations on, for many years and I love this.  Pasta with a little butter and cheese is always delicious.  A small amount of pepper completes it and makes it perfect for my taste,

Margaret chose this recipe from Modern Classics 1, page 148.  Check out her blog and our other members,  Gaye and Sarah's to see what they have done this week.    Kayte      Gaye      Sarah     Margaret

Baking is Therapy

I decided to bake the Milk-Chocolate Walnut Coffee Cake  selected by Eileen of One Hundred Eighty Degrees and organized by Joyce of  Kitchen Flavours.  You will find the other bakes at THB.

Since hubby does not like chocolate, I used raisins and walnuts and I think, it turned out well.  I forgot to put the filling in the middle so it is somewhere on the bottom.

I thought, I would add a little about mourning in Judaism.  There are stages of morning,  Right now, for us, this is called the Shloshim which ends 30 days after the burial.  We do not listen to music, cut our hair or go to parties.  The children of the deceased mourn even further, lasting the entire 12 months.  Celebrations are avoided at this time.  The other relatives are over the official mourning period,  Certainly, it is a time to remember the loved one.  Someone has suggested that since my daughter was such a fantastic cook and baker, we make a cookbook with her recipes and hopefully, we will get this done.  We also plan to open a private blog to share our pictures and memories.

It it important, to me, to stay connected in a concrete way as well as a spiritual one.

*I wrote a very abbreviated description of Jewish mourning.  I don't want you to walk away thinking that is comprehensive.  If you are interested in knowing more about the topic, let me know and I will give you the names of some reliable sites that explain this.

Love, Loss and Life and Ina Fridays

I have been doing a lot of thinking of late and much of it brings peace and acceptance.  I have discovered that these three words, love, loss and life are intertwined and the lines can be blurred.  The sadness of the loss is powerful, the memories of my daughter's life are momentous, and the love we had and have is awe inspiring.

She was my first daughter and was always filled with life.  As a child, her spunkiness got her into big trouble. Despite this, how could one be angry when she was always fighting for a cause.  So what , if she told a bully off in no uncertain terms.  So what, if she argued with a teacher who was acting like he was ten years old.  Once again, she was in the right.  This led her to become an adult who fought for the rights of others, fought for the lives of others, fought for her beliefs.

In her years of pain and sickness, she counseled others with her illness, she spoke in public to inform, she quietly listened to others weeping.  Her home was open to everyone and they brought with them both joy and sadness.  She listened and helped when possible.  She happily shared in their successes and pride.

After her death, we found out many accomplishments of hers, including stopping someone from taking her life.  She never said a word.  She just did and continued to do.  That is true life.  Many strangers came to the Shiva. They had never met her, just knew her through email but wanted to share their memories and their loss.

Love.  Just ask her husband.   Just ask her children.  Just ask her parents.  Just ask her friends.  I think, I can safely add, just ask her acquaintances.  She loved freely and with an open heart.  As her Mommy, I felt special and cherished.  She was so wise, I would go to her for advice.  I often wondered, where she came from with her special traits.

Loss.  I keep thinking of what I want to tell her and I have learned to talk to her, in my  head, and hope she can hear me.  Her presence feels real and whether it is or not, it comforts.  I miss my little girl and grown-up lady and I have been blessed to have her, in my life and now in my loss.

My prayer for all of you is to be blessed with children like this, children who fill your lives with warmth and smiles, hugs and kisses, stories and mementos.  We get more from our children than we can possible give to them.  I am so thankful for this.

I found this old post with a main dish from Ina and I am putting here to keep myself current without effort.

Baked Potatoes Stuffed with BBQ Chicken   adapted 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup(s) shredded cooked chicken

1/4 cup(s) shredded carrots

2 tablespoon(s) barbecue sauce   (Recipe Below)

2 teaspoon(s) light ranch dressing  (Bottled)

Method:

Bake 3 large potatoes at 400 degrees for 1 hour.  Remove from oven and slice through the middle so that you have two separate halves.

Combine chicken, carrots and barbecue sauce in a bowl.Spread ranch dressing on the baked mashed potato. Top with the chicken mixture which is pushed down, pulling up some potato to mix gently.

Return to oven to heat for no more than five minutes.

Barbecue Sauce   -  Ina Garten    (I made approximately a third of this recipe.)

Makes 6 cups

1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onion (1 large onion)
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup tomato paste (10 ounces)
1 cup cider vinegar (I ran out of cider vinegar so I subbed in red wine vinegar)
1 cup honey
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
leftover fried mushrooms and red peppers (1/2 cup)

In a large saucepan on low heat, saute the onions and garlic with the vegetable oil for 10 to 15 minutes, until the onions are translucent but not browned. Add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer uncovered on low heat for 30 minutes. Use immediately or store in the fridge.  The photo is missing the barbecue sauce.

    

Random Thoughts

Although I am not up to blogging normally, I do realize, this is a good time to share random thoughts and perhaps to even share a little about the Jewish customs, at the time of mourning.  Right now, nothing seems real in my world.  I am functioning and doing what must be done but there is still a fuzziness surrounding me.

To ground myself, let me start with "shiva", the week after the funeral, when we sit with other mourners.

"......... once shiva begins, the focus shifts to the mourners. The mourners experience a week of intense grief, and the community is there to love and comfort and provide for their needs. This is a critical point, for if one must feel the heart-wrenching pain of grief and loss, it should be done at a time when all those around are there to help and comfort.

The laws of mourning have the purpose of focusing a person on their own spirituality. We experience an overall feeling of physical discomfort as we totally focus on the soul of the one who has departed. We de-emphasize our own physicality by not pampering our bodies, so we remember that what we are missing at this time is not the physical person who is gone, but the essence of who that person was, which of course is their soul." Aish.com.

The first few days, we sat with my grandchildren, my daughter's husband and my children. These were the days we shared among ourselves and those who came to visit, memories and feelings. There was a lot of raw emotion and I found the tears of my grandchildren (grown or almost grown) overpowered my own feelings.

Each family member was attempting to take care of another. We had 13 mourners sitting shiva. That means 13 directly connected relatives (immediate family).

Relatives, friends and community members come to visit and we learned much about our daughter that we did not know, none of us......... She did much good in her life, including talking someone out of committing suicide (a complete stranger). People who never met her traveled from other states to comfort us. They shared their relationships with our daughter, mother and sister and each tale was one of goodness and comfort. She never shared all the mitzvahs (badly translated - good deeds).


The grandchildren have not fallen far from the tree. They are following both their parent's paths and are continuing to reach out to others. We were totally impressed with how they shared and how they mourned. The love in the room was overpowering and helped tremendously. The loss is ours. She is in a better place and she used her life wisely. We have marvelous memories to help with the intense loss we felt.


Seeing total unity in three generations of our family made me think, we must have done something right. We had to play a small part in their development. If you are a parent, you probably know, how at times, we question our decisions with our children. I am sure, we make lots of mistakes but I think, leaving a family with love, respect for each other and unity must say something.


Enough for now. We do have to eat although I have had little desire to cook and certainly not to experiment. I did make a mac and cheese, last night, that turned out a bit different. the sauce was mainly goat cheese, mustard, lemon juice, Romano and Parmesan with some spices made into a creamy sauce. I hope, I can recreate this in the future. It was a nice change and easy to make.